


Regret

by hailingstars



Series: Febuwhump [21]
Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017)
Genre: Arcades, Febuwhump, Fluff, Food Poisoning, Gen, Regret, Sick Peter Parker, Tony Stark Acting as Peter Parker's Parental Figure, Tony Stark Has A Heart, Vomiting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-23
Updated: 2019-02-23
Packaged: 2019-11-04 02:16:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,199
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17889605
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hailingstars/pseuds/hailingstars
Summary: Tony takes Peter to an arcade, and he makes food choices that he later regrets.





	Regret

**Author's Note:**

> Happy Friday!!! Here's some fluff!!

The sidewalk bustled with people, hurried ones, growling and annoyed at Tony, but he didn’t care. He kept his hands over Peter’s eyes, moved him into position in front of the arcade and continued to block the sidewalk.

“Mr. Stark,” said Peter. “Just let me look. This is so lame.”

Peter whining was another thing he didn’t care about. He took inspiration from May a while ago, and decided apathy was the best strategy to deal with whining. Unless, of course, it was accompanied by a life-threatening injury, which happened too often with Peter.

He shifted his feet, started to squirm, and Tony decided he made him wait long enough. He lifted his hands, and Peter jumped in place. He looked back at Tony, with a wild grin, one that give Tony a feeling he was going to regret this field trip.

“Really?!?”

Tony shrugged. Like it was no big idea. Like it didn’t give him the biggest endorphin high to be the cause of Peter’s happiness.

“I figured it’d be a good start to celebrating your birthday,” said Tony. “You and Ned talk about this place so much, and I thought about letting you invite friends, but then I thought this would be a good chance for us to spend more time together.” 

Peter responded by a sudden hug that knocked the wind out of him, then went scurrying into the arcade, leaving Tony to further annoy the people on the sidewalks for a few more seconds before following him inside.   

He’d waited for him by the doors. “This is so awesome, Mr. Stark.”

Awesome was the very last word Tony would describe this particular establishment. It was loud. There was a lot of flashing lights, game sounds, kids running everywhere, and an obnoxious display in the center of the room. It was the prize counter, and hung on the ceiling above it, in a net that looked like it should be a prop from a pirate movie, were the most valuable prizes.

Giant Avengers plushies. Tony didn’t know how he felt about his merch being marketed this way. 

“This is child gambling,” he told Peter.

“It’s not about the prizes,” said Peter. “It’s about the _experience._ ”

He shot another look up at the net full of Avengers characters. 

“I always wanted one of those, though. But my aunt and uncle only had enough money for a just a few tokens, and it doesn’t matter how good I am at BattleStars, it only gives you so many tickets.”

Tony tried to picture a young, disappointed, Peter Parker. It wasn’t an image he wanted in his head, and he coped with that by pulling out his wallet and handing Peter a fifty-dollar bill.

“Go wild.” 

He got that wild look in his eyes again, then sped off to exchange the money for tokens.

It was a scam. Tony knew it was a scam, but as Peter showed him his favorite games, as they played them together, as Peter ruthlessly destroyed him at every single one, he knew it was time well spent. And altogether, it hadn’t been a lot of time. They blew through fifty bucks worth of tokens in about thirty minutes and found a table in the dining area to sit down and count their tickets.

They were somewhere in the two thousand when a waiter came by with a pizza and plopped it down on the table.

“Oh no we didn’t order – “ 

“What do I care?” said the obviously over his job college student. “It’s on the house.”

“Awesome!” said Peter.

He grabbed a slice, but before he could bring it to his mouth, Tony stopped him.

“Don’t eat that,” ordered Tony.

Peter’s face melted. “Why not?” 

“Do you really need me answer that question?” His eyes dropped down to the pizza, greasy and thin and not at all like the pizza Tony preferred, that he would not hesitant to get Peter, if he asked him.

“Relax, Mr. Stark. I had this pizza all the time when I was little.” He took a bit out of the slice, and Tony cringed. 

He lost his counting partner as Peter became dedicated to eating not one slice, but the whole pizza. Tony was happy the boy was distracted. They were hundreds of tickets short for an Iron Man plush.

Out of the corner of his eye he saw it, just a glimpse of a silver, game token on the floor. He picked it up, told Peter to wait at the table with all their things, and went off to the wheel with all the lights. It was a game that wasn’t really a game, one that screamed childhood casino all over it, but Tony’s reflexives and ability to calculate accurate timing won him the jackpot on the first try.

He collected the tickets, then collected the ones from the table while Peter was still distracted by the pizza, and proudly traded them at the prize counter for the giant Iron Man plush. He ignored the look from the employee who fished it down. He wasn’t really buying his own merch. It wasn’t for him.

Tony took Iron Man back to the table, where he was horrified to find Peter, but no pizza. The vacuum cleaner had eaten it all.

Peter looked at the prize with a blank face. “But I wanted the Captain America one.”

“You’re grounded,” said Tony. He sat down and placed plush on the table. 

“I’m just kidding,” said Peter. He brought out that winning smile, the one that made all Tony’s time spent worth it, and picked up Iron Man. “I love this. It’s perfect.”

*

Tony woke up that night at 3 AM. His eyes flew open with a strange worry in the pit of his stomach. Something was wrong, and somehow, he knew it was wrong. He got out of bed and treaded down the hallway and into Peter’s bedroom. He wasn’t in his bed, but a soft light glowed across the room, coming from his bathroom. 

He followed it to the sight of Peter lying on the bathroom floor, cuddling the Iron Man plush, and looking thoroughly miserable.

“Peter?” asked Tony. “What’s wrong? Are you…sick?” 

His eyes were watery, the way someone’s eyes look after they’ve been puking, and suddenly, before the boy even nods his answer, Tony remembered the pizza.

“Oh buddy,” he said. “Why didn’t you have FRIDAY wake me up?”

“I didn’t want to bother you,” said Peter. His voice was raspy and weak and stabbing into Tony’s heart. 

“It’s not a bother.” 

He sat down, on the bathroom floor, next to his son. Peter let go of the plush and crawled into his lap. Tony pushed his sweaty hair back out of his forehead.

“I bet you’re regretting that p- “

Peter let out a pitying whine. “Please don’t say the p word.”

Tony sighed, and run his hand through his hair again. It was a long night of giving Peter backrubs, while he stuck his head in the toilet and puked with Tony in the splash zone. It wasn’t nearly as glamorous as the arcade, and that was saying something, but it was still completely worth it.


End file.
